Even though the tech behemoth’s new unified privacy policy takes effect Thursday, there are still ways to protect your data from being captured by Google.

The new policy means all the information Google collects about you on its platforms — including YouTube — will be put into one database so advertisers can get a better idea of consumer patterns and behaviour.

Before the changed policy, your search history and the sites you visited were kept apart from other details Google gathered about you.

Now, all the data is consolidated on a server so Google can treat you as a single user across Google+ and YouTube, Gmail and Google search. Only, as Electronic Frontier Foundation points out, just looking at search terms can reveal information about your age, sex, sexual orientation, health, location, religion and all kinds of other really personal stuff about you.

Alma Whitten, Google’s director of privacy for products and engineering, says the move is about helping consumers. Rather than 60 different privacy policies across Google products, there will be one. The information sharing also means more tailored searches and recommendations.

“We’re not collecting any new information as a result of this change. We’re not altering any of your privacy settings. And we still won’t sell your personal information to advertisers. We just want to use the information you already trust us with to make your experience better,” wrote Whitten in the Sacramento Bee.

Still, the only way to escape entirely is to stop using Google and family.

But while the deadline for purging your search history is over, there are some things you can do to keep your personal data safe online short of deleting your Google account and flushing your Android phone.

Vary or hide your IP address. (This is more complicated and can be done using special software.)

It’s also a good idea to look at privacy settings on Google Dashboard — a list of your data, chats and documents stored in your Google services. Then, by using Google’s Ad Preferences, you can opt out of personalized ads based on search results.

You can also “liberate your data” using Google Takeout. This service allows you to download the information Google has on you, then delete whatever you want manually.

There is the off chance that the privacy policy will not remain the way it is now. The French data protection watchdog CNIL is leading a Europe-wide investigation into how the policy violates European Union legislation. In a letter to Google, CNIL said it and the EU “have strong doubts about the lawfulness and fairness of such processing, and its compliance with European data protection legislation.”

Other views

Here’s what other media had to say about the privacy changes:

BBC: Changes made by Google to its privacy policy are in breach of European law, the EU's justice commissioner has said. Viviane Reding told the BBC that authorities found that "transparency rules have not been applied". The policy change, implemented on Thursday, means private data collected by one Google service can be shared with its other platforms including YouTube, Gmail and Blogger.

InformationWeek: For a time, it looked like Google had made peace with privacy, after the embarrassing revelations in 2010 that it had inadvertently been collecting WiFi packet data through software in its Street View cars. … But fearful of being outmaneuvered by Facebook, Google ignored heightened regulatory scrutiny over search-related antitrust issues and began mixing its so-called organic search results with Google+ search results. That only made lawmakers more mistrustful and competitors more vocal.

The Guardian: For most users, however, there is clearly an acceptance of the trade-off of receiving high-quality, innovative, web services for free in exchange for giving the company the right to monetise the information it gathers in the process. This is the trade-off that makes the free web work – including the Guardian.

Washington Post: Here’s a refresher course on how to use your Google privacy settings.

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